Countenancing criminality

GOVERNMENT’S response to the Saturnia Pension debacle is a major breach of trust.

It is a slap in the face of those who have taken time to investigate wrong doing, in Saturnia Pension Fund, which we have documented in this newspaper.

It is shocking that the entire Government is showing total disregard to facts, which have been proved by documentation in its record.

We can only assume that Government’s response has been influenced by reports offered by the captured and compromised Pensions and Insurance Authority.

Citizens, least of all victims of foul play, do not expect Government to dismiss complaints offhandedly without carrying out a proper and formal investigation as appears to be the case. Citizens depend on Government to stand up to high level corruption that imperils their interests.

We certainly do not agree with Government’s position because it does not represent the interest of the ordinary pension contributor who has little or no say in the manner it is managed and less so in investment decisions that may disadvantage the fund.

The least we expected was the government to undertake a more thorough investigation involving all the Trustees that were recently expelled from the fund for their opposition to the irregularities taking place in the fund.

We did not expect the whitewash that seems to be evolving indicative a malaise which must be dealt with very decisively.

As we have said before, it is either there is incompetence or high-level collusion to defeat and prevent the truth from being exposed.

The question is why?

We say so because, we find it astounding that Government could claim that Trustees approved the externalisation of US$40 million without Government approval. This is far from the truth.

The trustees, including their former chairperson who were hounded out are still alive and can surely testify their concerns with the manner in which investments were undertaken by the related companies that formed the investment and management team.

The trustees, who have since been removed, were concerned by the various financial decisions taken by team which were not approved.

There was serious consternation among the trustees over inside trading investments in companies in which some of the shareholders had interest. For example, K70 million investment loss in share value suffered by the fund to Lafarge was blamed on this fact.

We have in the last few months proved beyond all reasonable doubt that the fund which should be owned by contributors has shareholders contrary to the law.

We have also demonstrated that the contrived February annual general meeting was intended to remove all the Trustees that had opposed irregularities in the externalisation of the US$40 million from the fund, including the extortionist fees charged by Aflife.

We expect the appropriate authorities to undertake critical forensic investigations to bring all those involved to book, including the accounting firms that have year in and year out produced clean audit reports which make no mention of the parallel Saturnia accounts.